At-large elections rejected

St. Johns County School Board members will continue to be elected by district, rather than at-large, after the issue was essentially put to rest at a special school board workshop Tuesday afternoon.

Community activist Kim Kendall and a group of other residents of the northwestern part of the county had requested that the board workshop the idea of reverting to at-large elections for school board members, as was done before 1986.

Kendall had hoped the board would put a referendum on the ballot in the 2008 presidential election, in the form of a straw ballot. By posing a question to voters in the form of a straw ballot, it is possible to solicit the opinion of the electorate without creating any binding legal effect.

Essentially, a straw ballot is nothing more than an officially sanctioned opinion poll.

School board attorney Frank Upchurch recommended Tuesday that the board pass on the idea.

"To begin with, in my opinion, the school board does not have the authority to conduct a straw ballot," Upchurch told the board. "And, regardless, the voters of St. Johns County have already spoken on this issue."

Upchurch also said that even though board members are elected by individual district under the current system, each one represents the entire school district.

Kendall explained that she had been advised by the supervisor of elections to take the issue directly to the school board, which she did at the board's Sept. 11 meeting.

"I initially approached the county with this, but they told me to go to the school board with it first," she said. "I was merely following that advice. We're just trying to follow the proper procedure."

After listening to Upchurch's advice, the board members briefly discussed the issue before Chairman Beverly Slough put it to rest.

"We asked our attorney for an opinion on this matter, and he's given us one," Slough told Kendall. "We're going to follow it."

Though she was disappointed, Kendall said afterward that she would not pursue the matter further for now.

"It seems like we opened up a can of worms with this," she said. "And it wasn't our intention to do that."

She said that, while the matter was important to her, she would let it go.

"If we don't have the support for this from the school board members, then I won't go any further with it," she said. "I have other issues that I'm more concerned with. But Mr. Upchurch did kind of validate my point when he said each member of the board represents the whole district. Because the essence of my objection to the current method is that, while they can all make decisions that affect me, I can only vote for one of them."